DESCRIPTION: This is an application to obtain funding to 1) Develop assays that measure the intensity of known bitter compounds, based on a G-protein coupled bitter taste signal transduction pathway; and 2) assess the reproducibility, accuracy, and throughput of these assays to determine the method most amenable to high throughput screening. Discovery of a compound or compounds that blocks bitter taste has potential application on the marketing of foods, beverages and pharmacologically active oral dose preparations. The recent discovery of a bitter responsive G protein signal transduction pathway, permits the use of biochemical and molecular biological approaches to identify bitter antagonists. The purpose of this project is to develop assays sufficiently rapid in nature to screen chemical libraries for novel bitter taste blockers. In Phase I of this project these assays will be developed and evaluated. In Phase II the most robust assays will be scaled up for high throughput screening for potential bitter taste blockers. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: The development of high-throughput screens for taste modifying agents will enable the food product pharmaceutical, and flavor industries to search for taste modifying compounds at a rate at least 10 3x faster than current techniques allow. This should facilitate greatly the identification, and hence the development and introduction, of new taste modifying agents. Specific unmet needs include new artificial sweeteners and salts, animal feed, liquid oral dosage forms pharmaceuticals, flavor enhancers for those people suffering from diseases which weaken their sense of taste (many cancers), etc.